Legal aid charge on property - can it be transferred?

audigex

She won't be any worse off directly, but it will make my move impossible which will, by extension, make her move pointless.

Again, we're only looking here at whether there are any ways we can continue with the original plan: the debt itself isn't the issue, the timing of the discovery is, as we're already so far down the road of this sale and have incurred costs and would be letting a friend down. Essentially this move is a combination of the perfect circumstances for me, her and her seller.

As I hope I clarified above, the question wasn't about the debt or whether there is anything else we could do: she could clearly downsize to a different property, not sell to me, take out a mortgage etc - we're solely looking to see whether we can maintain the current sale as is.

That was answered within the first few replies to this thread and, unless somebody knows of a way to transfer a charge against a property (or persuade the government to agree to it), this thread is really over. Thanks for the input guys, I'll update tomorrow with the results of the official search against the registry. We're quietly hopeful there's no charge against the property, which would explain why my usually very conscientious mother has only a vague recollection of it being mentioned and no memory/documentation of the detail... but we shall see in 12 hours I guess!

audigex

And after all that panic, it turned out to be over nothing: there's no charge against the property and we can go ahead as planned.

Thanks for the input and helping us understand the situation a little better: We'll have a dig around and work out if there's any unsecured debt still lying around or try to find out when it was paid off... but the important part is sorted.

silvercar

audigex wrote: »

And after all that panic, it turned out to be over nothing: there's no charge against the property and we can go ahead as planned.

Thanks for the input and helping us understand the situation a little better: We'll have a dig around and work out if there's any unsecured debt still lying around or try to find out when it was paid off... but the important part is sorted.

I would be inclined to get hold of the credit reports, rather than tip someone off by a question "do we owe you any money". Remember unsecured debts would be time barred after 6 years if there has been no acknowledgement of the debt in that time.

audigex

Noted, thanks - she's definitely not heard anything about it in the last 6 years, but do government debts have the same time limits?

Annisele

The Limitation Act (and its six year rule) doesn't apply to debts owed to the Crown. In practice, that means you can't run away from things like your income tax.

If an ordinary creditor managed to get judgement in court, then I think the debt might still be enforceable even if it has been six years - see this page.

But I'm not convinced your mother's "debt" was actually owned to the Crown - or indeed that it's a debt at all. If legal fees were involved, then I guess (and it is just a guess) that they ought to have been paid to solicitors. In general, solicitors are not shy about getting their money. So, if you've heard nothing for a decade, and there's no charge registered against the house, I think it's unlikely there's any debt at all.